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Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

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Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#81

Post by nulbyte »

tasogare wrote: post #74
bsder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language is more regular? I guess maybe Korean (Hangul is phonetic, no?). All the romance languages are weird. You can't even go from pronunciation to characters in Chinese or Japanese due to Kanji. Most of the Cyrillic languages are just as bad.

> I guess maybe Korean (Hangul is phonetic, no?). Wrong, Korean writing is morpho-phonologic and has complex rules for transforming letters to actual pronunciation. And those rules applies at three different level (whatever position in the syllable, across syllable boundaries or not, or just within syllable).

I would say Hangul is regular, not phonetic. Sounds might change depending on their position when written, but I wouldn't call it particularly complex, certainly not compared to English orthography.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#82

Post by quartesixte »

tasogare wrote: post #74
bsder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language is more regular? I guess maybe Korean (Hangul is phonetic, no?). All the romance languages are weird. You can't even go from pronunciation to characters in Chinese or Japanese due to Kanji. Most of the Cyrillic languages are just as bad.

> I guess maybe Korean (Hangul is phonetic, no?). Wrong, Korean writing is morpho-phonologic and has complex rules for transforming letters to actual pronunciation. And those rules applies at three different level (whatever position in the syllable, across syllable boundaries or not, or just within syllable).

But even then, the rules are fairly consistent and mostly logical. And even then the transformations are not drastically different from the consonant’s “base” sound.

Some of those transformations are a byproduct of hangul losing a vowel and a handful of consonants, and Korean itself going through a change similar to Middle English > Modern English over the course of Joseon’s 400+ year history.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#83

Post by gregsadetsky »

jraph wrote: post #21
psychometry wrote: post #2

Probably a good thing, considering how generally useless and obnoxious the Académie Française is. English speakers around the world have no need for a bunch of snooty, self-appointed busybodies trying to police language.

You are being downvoted, but your comment is sadly accurate and not exaggerated. The members of the Académie Française prescribe the language out of there asses instead of observing how people actually speak it and documenting the language according to this observation. Last example is the gender of "Covid". Unlike our Canadian friends, everybody in France started saying "le covid". Only for the Académie Française to…

The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF)'s relatively nuanced take on it is here:

http://gdt.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ficheOqlf.aspx?Id_Fiche=26557671

"On constate une hésitation dans le genre attribué au terme COVID-19" -- "One can sense some hesitation regarding the gender assigned to the term COVID-19"

The feminine form ("la covid") might come (according to the OQLF, at least) from "la maladie à coronavirus 2019" i.e. "maladie" (which is feminine) "transferring" its gender over to "covid".

---

Actually, now that I read the Académie Française's take on it, I don't find it too unreasonable:

https://www.academie-francaise.fr/le-covid-19-ou-la-covid-19

They state (as does the OQLF) that the gender is transferred over from the "core" word of the expression. So, "la" (feminine) SNCF because SNCF stands for "Société nationale des chemins de fer français" and "Société" (the core word) is feminine.

"la" covid, again, because of "maladie" (which is feminine)

The Académie says: "Il n’en reste pas moins que l’emploi du féminin serait préférable" -- "That being said, the use of feminine would be preferable". Not _that_ prescriptive.

Should the Académie have a prescriptive (vs descriptive) role in every day French (in France / or Canada) is of course a whole debate topic. :-)

---

Shameless plug since we're on the topic: I run an Urban Dictionary-like site for French Canadians expressions -- https://www.laparlure.com/ -- it's purely descriptive and user-generated i.e. French (mostly in Canada) "as it's spoken"

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#84

Post by TheCoelacanth »

chrisseaton wrote: post #67
Jtsummers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English doesn't have a notion of gendered nouns. In a lot of other European languages, however, they have them. I don't know French so can't draw any examples from it, but in Italian "tavolo" (table) is masculine while "sedia" (chair) is feminine. The reason for that is, at this point in time, by definition of the language. However, when creating novel words or bringing in loanwords the choice is largely arbitrary. G…

> English doesn't have a notion of gendered nouns. ‘She’s a fine ship.’

That's anthropomorphism, not grammatical gender.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#85

Post by nulbyte »

BalinKing wrote: post #62
smnrchrds wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite example: "banana" has three a's, no two of which are pronounced the same.

I think I pronounce the first and last a's the same (specifically, as /ə/)... it must be a dialectical difference (mine is General American English).

I've think I've heard bina:na:, bina:nɚ, and binænə, in addition to bənænə.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#86

Post by rgoulter »

smnrchrds wrote: post #59
pavlov wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish, Italian and German spellings are a lot more regular than English. You can almost always pronounce a word correctly even if you’ve only seen it written. English stumbles even with basic vowels. (After speaking this language for 30 years, I’m still unsure whether “pear” rhymes with “bear” or “fear”! This kind of thing doesn’t happen in any of the other four languages I know.) Even French beats English in this…

My favourite example: "banana" has three a's, no two of which are pronounced the same.

That's a good example. I am amused by "record" being pronounced differently whether it's a verb or a noun.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#87

Post by enkid »

saithound wrote: post #78
ByteJockey wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English spelling being standardized so early is one of the problems with it. The language has changed since the spelling was standardized (minus a few debates on the letter u).

If only there was a society of learned people, writers, academics, and civil servants, united for the advancement of language, empowered to regularly update the standard so that it remained convenient even as the vernacular evolved! I wonder if the Royal Society had any plans to create such an organization in the 17th century... ;)

There are plenty of institutions that do this already. Dictionaries, University English departments, other academic institutions. I don't see why having a single centralized office to do this would be better, especially with a language like English where it's spoken in so many different countries.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#88

Post by rgoulter »

pavlov wrote: post #38
bsder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language is more regular? I guess maybe Korean (Hangul is phonetic, no?). All the romance languages are weird. You can't even go from pronunciation to characters in Chinese or Japanese due to Kanji. Most of the Cyrillic languages are just as bad.

Spanish, Italian and German spellings are a lot more regular than English. You can almost always pronounce a word correctly even if you’ve only seen it written. English stumbles even with basic vowels. (After speaking this language for 30 years, I’m still unsure whether “pear” rhymes with “bear” or “fear”! This kind of thing doesn’t happen in any of the other four languages I know.) Even French beats English in this…

"The Chaos" is an excellent demonstration of the irregularities of English's spelling/pronunciation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#89

Post by caddemon »

nulbyte wrote: post #80
gerdesj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gather that Hungarian is nigh on completely regular with respect to symbol to sound. I was told this by a Hungarian, speaking English. Hungarian does seem to have a lot of diacritics which implies to me a deliberate formalism.

I am learning Hungarian, and I find this much truer than the usual claim that it's phonetic one-to-one. Some letters change sounds in certain instances, but there are discernable patterns, unlike much of English. I find it fairly easy to spell a word heard, even if it's the first time encountering. Of course, it also helps that Hungarians are usually a root with a known affix or five.

Bit of a tangent but what are you using to learn Hungarian? I've been casually using Duolingo which is decent for picking up vocab and the pronunciations like you mentioned. However I don't like the way it presents the grammar rules at all. Have you found any good guides for learning more about conjugations, word ordering, etc.? I'm interested in learning Hungarian more seriously but would want to find a source I'm confident in first.
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